If you're GC, what should trans people actually do?

[AmaListening]

I'd like to understand what someone with gender critical views thinks trans people should do.

Maybe let's make it specific with a couple of famous examples: Laverne Cox (trans woman), and Elliot Page (trans man).

Imagine you had it exactly your way. What should those human beings, who feel and identify the way they do, do about every aspect like: names, pronouns, surgery, clothing, relationships, social spaces, work, sports.

How should Laverne speak about her own identity? Should Elliot not have had top surgery?

I'd really like to understand what the world looks like for trans people if we carry GC views through to their end points.

Also, isn't the expression 'preferred pronouns'? Surely this means that they aren't mandatory.

Yes, indeed, @DarkDayforMN

Many people struggle with this but we just waste time and energy if we look for a middle ground. There isn't one.

Going back to something pps have said earlier...
They think that they themselves are evidence of "male women" or "female men" or "being born in the wrong body" and because we recognise that as nonsense logically and in practice, we are denying that people like that can exist. That's the sense in which they say that we are denying their existence.

There is never a case where a TW should be treated as a Woman, except there is, I work in a large organisation, there are several TW, TM and NB people, on a day to day basis in normal working relationships it does no harm to anyone to refer to them by the name and pronouns they have chosen. Does that mean I think that TW belong in female prisons, changing rooms, hospital wards etc, no.

I think we need to stop doing this, not to reject trans people's sense of self, but because we need to go back to the start and start again with different words.

I'm happy to believe trans people (and indeed those who actively identify as cis) feel a genuine thing. I can understand how they may see something in the opposite sex, or in society's construction of the opposite sex, and feel they understand themselves better through that lens. But these are not the same things as being the opposite sex. So the two things.. the feeling and the sex, should not have the same name.

If the two things, the feeling and the sex, had different names, different pronouns, there would never have been any question about whether single sex provisions should be opened up based on gender. There's no reason behind it, no coherent argument. The demand exists only because the same name was used for two different concepts.

I can see how at the start, when it was transsexual (medically transitioning) people saying "I should have been the opposite sex", it seemed like the right thing to do. But the more we understand about trans people and the different ways they think about and embody their gender, the clearer it is that this is not some sort of mental shadowing of body sex, but a different thing altogether. IMO linking this feeling to sex has been a red herring. It's actually limiting our understanding.

"Gender" identity is, I think, more about finding a metaphor to express your inner sense of who you are and to ask people to understand that about you.

The cat genders and so on get short shrift but I think they may be the way forward. Not because anyone is really a cat, but because non-human neo gender identities could offer a social language of archetypes and metaphor to express self without mapping yourself onto other humans' real lives.

I won't be calling any man she or her under any circumstances,fuck that shit.

👏

I’m yet to be convinced that any trans/NB etc is not very mentally unwell.

The ones I’ve encountered have all clearly had serious mental health issues and affirming it certainly isn’t making things any better

If we're going to start again and decouple whatever it is from the gender and sex muddle, maybe we need to take Jordan Peterson's advice (words I never expected to write) and say 'personality'.

Oh I totally agree. I was pointing out to the other poster that pronouns isn't woman treatment - whatever that was supposed to mean.

This. Totally.

@FatAgainItsLettuceTime

I think that the fact that you are equating "being a bit transphobic" (allegedly) with violent behaviour toward people who do not agree with you as equivalent bad behaviour is quite telling, tbh. They are not the same

I think the term "phobia" is used to silence to any opposition - disagreement with a view does not make you phobic it means you have a different point of view.

You've put a sentence in quotes as if I actually said that, but I didn't did I? You've changed my words, removed the context and then put it in quotation marks.

You're proving my point about how important it is to read widely, apply critical thinking and use common sense.

Don't misrepresent what I said.

If you look up my posting history or just read through this thread you will see that I am gender critical, I have been very very clear that I do not agree with the statement that TWAW or that trans gendered people should have access to single sex spaces designated for women. I am strongly against medicalisation, surgery and affirmation only approach for children.

But that doesn't mean that every Trans Person or Ally is violent, or cruel, or deluded as some would seem to be suggesting, just like it doesn't mean that every feminist/gender critical person is an Angel just wanting to protect the kids and women.

When they say transportation now I just hear la-la-la-la-la-la.

Word is used so often its lost any impact.

Same for bigot/ nazi/ terf

*transphobia

My phone is transphobic, it won't let me put transphobia

I think the people who decided that gender dysphoria shouldn't be classed as a mental health issue did sufferers a disservice

I agree and I thought we were supposed to be removing the stigma from mental illness but if you say it’s a mental illness people get really angry like you’ve insulted them or think something bad should be done to them. Whereas any decent person would feel compassion but not indulge the fantasies.

I’ve never heard a good explanation for why people with body dysmorphia who want their leg amputated because they really feel it’s not theirs are any different to people who want their breasts removed because they feel they shouldn’t have them.

I’ve never heard a good explanation for why people with body dysmorphia who want their leg amputated because they really feel it’s not theirs are any different to people who want their breasts removed because they feel they shouldn’t have them.

Have you seen this article? It makes that exact comparison.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/12/a-new-way-to-be-mad/304671/

I really hate the ‘treated like a woman’ in a work context. What does that even mean? I spent a lots of my time at work 20 years ago (male-dominated, heavy manufacturing) explaining that nobody should be ‘treating me like a woman’ (I am one) we should all just be treating each other as competent professionals. I’m not talking about holding doors open (common courtesy to either sex), I’m talking about apologising (only to the woman) for swearing, expecting women wouldn’t go on to the production floor, a union rep saying to me “I hate women”…… I’m sure things have improved since then. Nevertheless, ’Treat me like a woman’ smacks of awful sexism to me

I really hate the ‘treated like a woman’ in a work context.

Exactly. If sex matters, don't be dishonest about it. If it doesn't, then it doesn't and why are you treating men and women differently?

I’ve never heard a good explanation for why people with body dysmorphia who want their leg amputated because they really feel it’s not theirs are any different to people who want their breasts removed because they feel they shouldn’t have them.

In theory you could argue that there was better medical evidence for performing one of them, but that wouldn't really mean that both shouldn't be considered an unhealthy delusion.

@FatAgainItsLettuceTime

But you were comparing the two "tribes" as if the "bad behaviour" of the GC women is the same as or very similar to the bad behaviour on the other side in a very "both sides have extreme people" kind of way. I'm sorry, but this is rubbish. No GC women has said that that violence represents the whole trans community BUT the fact that this issue of male violence associated with the trans cause has not been called out enough by the media/society/trans allies themselves is part of the problem, in my view. Even if not actually perpetuating the violence, many of the protesters seem to think that violence is acceptable because "trans lives are being threatened".

It honestly is very relevant, because one of the cards used against GC women is that our words are "literal violence" and we should check our speech at all times. This is why it matters and why lots of GC women are fed up with it - no one is telling these organisations to stop being violent with anywhere near the same level of volume as those who tell women to shut up and not hurt feelings

Wasn't the post you're referring to talking about how the press presents the 2 sides, not how the poster sees it?

"Even if you look at the Let Women Speak events, the press and personal accounts are usually very polarised, it's either a case of all TRAs were violent thugs or all GC crowd were transphobic monsters. Obviously that's not the case, basic common sense tells you that neither account is 100% accurate, there will be bad actors on both sides and a collection of more moderate people in between."

In theory you could argue anything. But is there any better medical evidence for performing either of these? Which one?

@CyberCritical

Yes, but "Bad actors on both sides?". I just don't recognise this really.

I agree that the alleged extremes on ‘both sides’, pitting feminists against trans activists. are not symmetrical. There is no comparison. Feminists don’t threaten or assault trans people. I haven’t noticed feminists protest trans events. They don’t post horrific messages about harming trans people. And feminists talk rationally about erasure due to language and laws and not ‘genocide’.

It also is not symmetrical when you discuss ‘demands’. Women ask for single sex spaces to be respected but not for trans people to be excluded, just that a third option is provided (that is not the disabled provision ). They ask that female sport is respected but not that trans people be excluded, but that compete in an open category. I know all this has been said already, but it bears repeating.

Even hard line women’s rights campaigners are not preventing trans people from speaking or from expressing their view. They also don’t want trans people excluded from public life (despite the hyperbolic accusations). They want the conflicts between the rights of the two groups acknowledged and resolved in ways that work for both. This doesn’t mean that trans people get the demanded access to female single sex provisions, but that they have solutions for their needs that protect them. This may mean that they don’t get the extreme validation they demand, but that they are safe and living their life without the authoritative element of their demands.

The two sides are not symmetrical.

How can they be when they are based in ideology and not science and evidence based?

Maybe, however, the extremes in some poster’s minds include the ultra conservative extreme which so often gets lumped in with feminists. Even then, I am not sure even those people are symmetrical with the actions and demands of the extreme trans activists. Maybe they are, I don’t know as I am not seeing that here in the UK.

‘Middle’ is nice in theory. But I don’t believe it applies here when you start to analyse it in depth. Certainly not neatly, if at all.